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Error Correction Techniques in ELT: Timelines and Concept Checking Questions

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6Wrm3i1dC0cWi11c1pHN1VkUXM
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6Wrm3i1dC0cUnhJTkJGcDBPVXc

New Method of Teaching Grammar

An Integrated Method to Teaching Grammar

By Ossama M. Sayed

English Lecturer at Shinas College of Technology, Oman

mrekx77@yahoo.com

The latest method to teaching grammar aims at striking a balance and drawing benefits from both methods of teaching grammar: direct instruction and discovery learning. It mixes guidance with exploration as needed because discovery and direct instruction have something to learn from one another.

The Introduce, Discover, Study, Produce Method (IDSP) includes four stages as follows:

1. Introduction: set the stage for learning

This Introduction Stage includes the following activities:

Ø Engagement: the teacher’s effort is to awake the students’ interest, arouse their curiosity, and engage their emotions, employing numerous means, such as games, pictures, audio or video recordings, or dramatic stories.

Ø Pre-teach vocabulary: The teacher presents unfamiliar words that will appear in the reading passage.

Ø Reading Tasks: Students read a passage which contains the target grammar items. This is to familiarize them with the passage information as well as the grammatical items. Give them reading tasks (global task and detailed reading tasks).

2. Discover the grammar item

Teacher’s Roles	Students’ Roles	Format of Activities
ØTeachers direct the students’ responses using induction and/or deduction to refine and focus generalizations. ØThey present sets of stimuli and students are asked to find out relations and draw conclusions. For example, they make conclusions and generalizations or to find pattern of relationships. ØThey plan extra time. They must understand that discovery takes time. Ø After an activity is completed, they promote and moderate discussion to firm up and extend generalizations, and give feedback. ØThey might have students repeat the activity if necessary and give assistance and guidance as appropriate.	ØThe students must have perquisite knowledge related to the target grammar item. ØThe students construct their own knowledge by experimenting, and inferring rules from the results of these experiments ØThey work in small groups to discover the target grammar items. ØThey participate in the discovery process by observing relations, experimenting, inferring, generalizing, concluding and solving problems. ØThey reflect on their previous knowledge to learn new information.	ØThe well- prepared discovery activities help the students to observe the grammar item in context, provide them with the overall picture and enable them to integrate new knowledge into their existing knowledge base. ØActivities must be constructive, inductive and/or deductive. ØActivities begin with the students observe of a specific grammar item and end with a conclusion about how the grammar item takes place. ØThe process of learning is inquiry (using questions to guide discovery), the result is discovery, and the learning context is a problem. ØAll activities must be learner-centered.

3. Study the grammar item

The Study Stage activities focus on explanation, guided practice, personalization and feedback on the grammar items. Although the teacher explains the grammar item, they can choose student-cantered activities that help students learn the grammar items and get them engaged.

First, the teacher gives an explanation of a grammatical item or employs student centred activities .The teacher is supposed to provide the students with a wise blend of interesting activities that lead to conscious and subconscious learning of the grammar items. Then, students practice the grammar items under the guidance of the teacher. After that, they use the grammar items to talk about themselves. Finally, the teacher gives feedback.

For example, the teacher explains the form of the Present Continuous Tense and then encourages the students to describe various pictures using this tense. By choosing appropriate pictures, the teacher is able to achieve the goal of presenting the Present Continuous Tense without the students having an unpleasant feeling that they are being controlled by the teacher or forced to learn the particular grammar item.

4. Production

The objective in the Production Stage is to use “the target language communicatively. In this way, students get chances to try out real language use with little or no restriction – a kind of rehearsal for the real life.”

At this stage, exercises and activities are designed to make students use the target language communicatively and enable them to use their full language knowledge in the selected situation or task.

Activities may include writing paragraphs, role playing, discussions, advertisement design, debate, describing and drawing, story and poem writing/reading/telling, and group writing.etc.

For more details about the new method, click on the link below:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6Wrm3i1dC0cYk16RXB5NExsWEE
To check one model lesson, click on the link below:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6Wrm3i1dC0cNnZ1NVZTRnRTWGc